From
eating McDonald's to being a Muslim for 30 days, a new documentary
series by Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame delves into the lives
of Muslims in America.

For 30 Days, a Christian from the Bible
Belt lived with a Muslim family in Michigan. The result? Heated
arguments, religious confusion, and the start of a beautiful
friendship.

Spurlock single-handedly took on the world's
largest fast-food chain with his first documentary, Super Size Me,
which saw the filmmaker eat nothing but McDonald's for 30 days.

The
documentary was nominated for an Oscar in 2004, and although they deny
the film was a motivating factor, McDonald's has now stopped the Super
Size option in the US.

"After the test screening of Super Size
Me, we knew we had something great that tapped into something visceral
and personal in people," says Spurlock over breakfast in a Los Angeles
diner.

Morgan Spurlock says Americans do not think beyond their towns

Inspired
by the debate that raged following early screenings of his McDonald's
epic, he sought new subjects to put under the microscope. Top of the
list was being a Muslim in post-9/11 America.

"We don't get
any happy Muslim stories," he says. "We don't get 'Here's a great thing
a Muslim did today' and I wanted to do a show that would demonstrate
what it is like to be a Muslim in America."

Experiment
The
stage was set: Spurlock would take an ordinary American - if such a
thing exists - and have him live with a Muslim family, observing all
their customs, for one month.

Finding the participants was not
easy, Spurlock on one hand being careful to weed out those looking for
Reality TV-style fame while at the same time trying to find a Muslim
family who did not feel they were walking into a trap.

"As
with most communities, the Muslim community is very tight knit and very
protective, especially in post 9/11 America," says Spurlock. "They
scrutinise any journalistic integrity and you can see why, with what's
happened."

The guinea pig in this experiment would be Dave Stacy, a 33-year-old insurance sales executive from West Virginia.

Dave Stacy ®, with his hostsShamae and Sadia Shakir Haque

Stacy
is described in the show as a "beer-drinking, pork-eating American". As
a practising Christian with no knowledge of Islam, Stacy admitted -
before embarking on his 30-day journey - that he had felt reassured
after 9/11 when he saw Muslims profiled at airports.

When
Spurlock pressed him for what came to mind when someone said the word
"Muslim", Stacy replied: "A man with an AK-47, at war with someone."

Mutual scepticism
The scepticism was not only on Stacy's side.

"We
were worried that this was someone very opinionated about Muslims,"
says Shamael Haque, a first year resident in neuropsychiatry at Henry
Ford hospital in Detroit.

Haque, along with his wife Sadia
Shakir, who attends the Thomas Cooley Law School, put these
reservations aside and opened their Dearborn, Michigan, home to this
stranger from the Bible Belt.

During his 30 days, Stacy lived, ate and prayed with his Muslim hosts.

He
also read the Quran, tried to learn Arabic and visited a halal
slaughterhouse. In one very tense scene, he went out on to the street
to petition Americans into signing a bill to stop the profiling of
Muslim Americans.

Looking back at the experience, Stacy
recounts how he would often hear shouts of "Faith Traitor!" and
"American Taliban!", while in Muslim areas he was approached by people
who, as Stacy says, "thought the whole show was a conspiracy to make
them look bad".

Traditional dress
Stacy was dressed most of the time in a salwar and kurta, something which initially bothered Sadia Shakir Haque.

"I did think 'Why are you wearing this clothing when none of us wear this?' It's not realistic," she says.

But
the producers were adamant that Stacy make this change in his dress as
well as grow a beard. Their insistence on this point certainly created
a more eventful trip to the airport where Stacy, dressed in his new
Pakistani attire, felt what many Muslims have gone through at airports
since the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States.

He was stopped for the first time in his life, searched, and stared at throughout the journey.

Stacy laughs, looking back on the flight. "A lady sitting next to me on the plane was so nervous she couldn't knit," he says.

Discussions
During
the daytime, while the Haques were at work, Stacy took regular meetings
with a local imam. But their sessions did not produce the clear answers
and explanations Stacy was searching for and he started to look
elsewhere.

Enter Ameer, his Arabic teacher. In the fun and
relaxed atmosphere of an English speaker trying to get his mouth around
Arabic pronunciation, Stacy made his first tentative steps into
understanding the religion.

"Ameer initially was there to
teach me Arabic but it was so much more," says Stacy. "It's so strange
for me, as fond as I am of him, to think that he was one of the people
I was vilifying. It's really opened my eyes."

That is Stacy talking now, but at the time the amount of new information was almost too much.

"I
had a lot of sleepless nights, the days were 15 hours of heated
debates, often about global economics and politics, something which -
like many Americans - I don't know that much about. It was information
overload. At night I had time with my thoughts - thoughts I had not had
before."

In one scene, Stacy is clearly taken aback to learn
that Muslims are part of the same monotheistic tradition that he
follows himself.

It seemed to highlight simultaneously how
little most Americans know about Islam, and how much work American
Muslims still have to do in taking control of their image.

"We
need to make a better effort in how we are represented," says Sadia
Shakir Haque, echoing a point she made in the documentary. "We take it
for granted living in Muslim communities, and we must not forget how we
are perceived by those outside it."

Sadia Shakir Haque's
experience living in Miami's melting pot, where it was common to see
Jewish women - not to mention the Catholic nuns on her college campus -
covering their hair, helped her give some context to Stacy while
educating him on the hijab.

"I explained to him that Muslim women were continuing that sense of modesty."

September 11
A
dinner discussion where Stacy questioned why Muslim Americans had not
come out more strongly and condemned the attacks on the World Trade
Centre created one of the most illustrative scenes on the divide of
viewpoints.

Shamael Haque's view was that in post 9/11 America the key questions were simply not being asked.

"There
are deeper issues about Muslims in that region, and what would lead a
person to do something as irrational as that. But if people do ask
questions, then they are viewed as unpatriotic," he says.

"We can't just say these people are crazy. We need to ask what would make them so crazy that they would do that."

Stacy was clearly uncomfortable facing up to this question.

"I
had these feelings that I was being unpatriotic," he says, but adds
that since the documentary was finished he has found himself engaging
in political discussions more often.

Friday prayers
Stacy's
other major obstacle was praying in a mosque, something which he said
at the start of the documentary he would not be willing to do.

Spurlock
says: "For me the best line of the episode is when Dave is conflicted
about going to his first juma and he is overcome with emotion and goes
to Imam Husseini and says, 'I just don't know if I believe this, what
you're saying.' And the imam replies, 'David, you're here to learn, not
to believe.'"

A participant in another of Spurlock's
documentaries in the series quit before the end of his 30 days, but
Stacy lasted the course, eventually taking part in the prayer at the
mosque.

Stacy and the Haques have kept in contact and are planning on meeting this summer.

"We expected him not to know the principles," says Shamael Haque. "But he was very receptive, open to learning."

Harsh words
Where the rest of the nation is concerned, Spurlock ends with some harsh words.

"We're
a country where 15% have passports. We don't think beyond our borders
so why should we think beyond our own towns? We are in this protective
world. We're a nation that doesn't read newspapers, we don't read
books.

"For me, that's why a show like this is important, to
get some information out there to educate people. We can't demonise six
million American Muslims. There are 270 million Americans out there and
the last time I checked, Timothy McVeigh wasn't a Muslim. So I think
that we just need to preach a little tolerance."

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